Saturday, 5 May 2012

It could be called naive art. I must add that it's on a spare bit of plasterboard.

Colin and Barry are our builders, but so too is Blaine, who is Barry's son. Blaine does not partake in the rivalry or ribaldry and merely turns up an hour before anyone else and just gets down to it.

There's a report in the news that hospital staff washing the crap off their hands has had a great effect in tackling superbugs. I'd never have guessed that - never realised that pathogens were dangerous, but there again, I guess some hospital staff were oblivious to that too.

You know, the irony of all these Labour council gains is that Milliband will interpret it as a vote of confidence in his leadership, which I'm 100% certain it ain't. Wish the bugger would just disappear and make room for his big brother. Ed is just riding a wave of anti-Cameron sentiment.

As far as the London Mayoral election goes, no matter which of the two main candidates won, it was a dead cert that the winner would be a twit. The only reason the Tory twit won was because he is one of the few Tories who has openly criticised Cameron's policies.

About an 8th of the population of Bristol has voted to have a Mayor - God alone knows why! More self-publicists vying for a position of power in an elective dictatorship that is totally unnecessary and has the potential to emasculate local councillors. It's an extra cost burden too - haven't we got enough politicians as it is? We may as well have an American style system where we vote for the PM as well as MPs - utterly senseless and anti-democratic, if you ask me.

The ultimate democracy is where each citizen is represented individually in government. Now that's not feasible in anything except an ancient Greek city state where only a very few were eligible to vote in the first place. Pragmatically we thus vote for a local person to represent a group of us. Each step toward the voting block becoming larger is a step away from democracy; each step toward more localised voting is a step toward democracy, as it almost guarantees representation. A mayor from only one political party is inherently less democratic than a council comprising many local representatives of different perspectives.

Just think about it - the Republicans are not currently represented at all in the office of the US Presidency, but they are in the Senate. Similarly, Labour and the other parties are not represented in the London Mayor, but they are in local councils. I can't think of a single benefit that an elected Mayor brings.

Cameron's mantra of: "The financial mess we inherited from Labour," is starting the wear a bit thin now, don't you think. It's not as if the entire western hemisphere was governed by Labour at the time of the financial crisis....